– As previously mentioned, I’m making my first feature length film. It’s called Meet Me There, stars WWE’s Goldust, features a poster designed by the same lady who designed CM Punk’s new shirt and is written by, uh, the guy who writes The Best and Worst of Raw. If you like any of those things, you should consider donating to the cause.

Please click through to enjoy The Best And Worst Of WWE Raw for April 8, 2013.

Page 2

Worst: The Return Of The Worst Possible WWE Insult

Last year, I missed the entirety of the post-WrestleMania Raw (aka “the only Raw where stuff happens”) because I was on my way back from Miami and stuck in the Dallas airport. This year I made it home somewhere near the beginning of the Intercontinental Championship match, so all I missed was a short Daniel Bryan/Big E Langston match (more on that in a second) and an opening, celebratory John Cena segment that was capped by him saying Mark Henry had the “breath of a thousand asses.”

If you’re a regular watcher of WWE programming, you’re aware that the only thing WWE thinks is more funny than a dude in a Sherlock Holmes hat and pipe looking for “clues” is somebody saying somebody else has bad breath. They LOVE it. It’s the worst insult they can come up with. Triple H will hold you down on a table and slap your chest like a weirdo for saying his wife’s a whore and his children are worthless and stupid, but he’d probably pull out a gun and shoot you if you told him his breath was like something’s asshole. I like to imagine a scenario where I meet Vince McMahon, shake his hand, then just casually ask him if he needs a mint. I can’t figure out whether he’d start screaming and pointing at me, or if he’d just do that big exaggerated gulp.

Worst: Hey, It’s That Awesome Match I Suggested To Build The Tag Title Match From … Uh, The Day Before This

I think every pre-Mania Best and Worst of Raw featured a line about how Daniel Bryan should have a match on Raw with Big E Langston. It’s just one of those things I wanted to see. I like both guys, Langston could benefit from getting to work with somebody who isn’t Bo Dallas, and Daniel Bryan is arguably at his best going up against huge monster guys. See: Mark Henry, Takeshi Morishima, etc. Not only that, but Daniel Bryan’s offense is like 70% hitting you in the chest with something, and Big E Langston is 70% chest.

Here’s a quick list of reasons why this disappointed me:

1. I didn’t get home in time to see it after asking for it for a month.

2. It was only two minutes long.

3. Daniel Bryan lost a two minute version of any match.

4. It was mostly pointless, because the Ziggler Crew tag title shot happened the night before, and (assuming you’ve seen the rest of Raw) they probably aren’t trying to build to a rematch.

I hope this isn’t the last time we see the match, because I still think it can be great. I also hope that one day Michael Cole attempts to explain why The Big Ending hurts Langston’s opponents, when it looks like Langston is hurting his back and arm and the other guy is just kinda dropping five feet onto his hands and knees.

Best: Let’s Go Barrett, Clap Clap ClapClapClap

So, this made my heart flutter a little bit.

The New Jersey crowd starts chanting for Wade Barrett about midway through this match, and that’s when the post-WrestleMania Raw goes from “normal Raw” to “OH MY GOD THIS RAW.” If they called an audible to give Barrett the win in response to the crowd, good for them. If they didn’t, and scheduled Miz to win the IC title to continue his “I’m good at WrestleMania” gag to just turn around and give it back to Barrett — a guy who held the title forever and only ever seemed to lose, but never lose IT — is a little suspect. Either way, Miz got his clock cleaned while an arena of people cheered, and things seem just a little more right.

I really enjoyed this match. I thought it was better than their Mania effort, helped a lot by a crowd actually giving a shit about what was happening instead of trying to find their seats and squeeze past people and battle ushers. Face Miz continues to recover from his abysmal transition into good-guydom and looks like he’s got the figure-four processes on lock, so that’s a positive. And Barrett? Oh man …

Best: Now THAT’s A Motherf**king Bullhammer

Earlier in the match, Barrett mistimes Miz’s backbreaker-to-neckbreaker combo (or loses his balance, or tries to jump, or SOMETHING) and Miz ends up landing on Barrett’s face. It looked painful. I can’t say for sure whether or not the match-ending Dog Boner elbow strike was a receipt for the f**k-up, but suddenly the wimpiest, worst-looking finish in WWE became a STRAIGHT ELBOW TO THE MOUTH WITH AUTHORITY, and thank Christ.

I’m not saying Wade Barrett should go Full Roderick Strong and just start hitting people for real, but if the Bullhammer looked more like that and less like the World’s Worst Rainmaker, I’d be happy. I am also totally okay with him braining Miz on the reg, because Miz is pretty much the king of f**king up and hurting people, so you can sneak in a few shoot elbow KOs before anybody says anything.

Best: Brickie, Forever And Ever

I feel like I say it every week, but I cannot get enough of Brad Maddox on my television. He doesn’t even have to say anything funny. He just makes faces and covers his mouth and moves his eyebrows around and I’m in. I also love how he’s secretly been this totally positive thing for Vickie. She started out giving him a job just to make Paul Heyman mad, but notice how different she is now from before she had Cornbeef around … before, she was always interrupting people and shouting and yelling at the crowd. Now, she just hangs around backstage in her office, deals with problems as they come to her, and never has to really scream at anybody. She can even send Maddox out for interviews with Matt Striker, or to make impromptu matches. It all seems very low stress.

Sheamus and Randy Orton have got to be the worst dudes on this show, too. I don’t know how Brickie deals with them. They lost the match, you know? They didn’t tag in Show, pissed him off, and lost the match. WWE’s recaps say they lost when Show knocked them out, but they didn’t … they lost, and THEN Show knocked them out. Orton and Sheamus shouldn’t get any special privileges. Brickie was right to just make them wrestle each other and get booed out of the building.

Page 3

Best/Worst: Here’s That WrestleMania Match Again For Free, Everybody

The secret to this Raw is that it was SPECTACULAR because of the crowd response and atmosphere, but actually pretty assy in regard to match quality and storytelling. An early example is Daniel Bryan losing to Big E Langston AFTER the tag titles match at WrestleMania, but just BEFORE Ziggler cashes in and makes Team Rocket’s tag titles quest irrelevant. Another is the handicap match between World Heavyweight Champion Alberto Del Rio and the Jack Swagger/Zeb Colter team the night after Swagger LOST his title match, featuring almost no participation from Zeb. It’s like they (1) needed Del Rio to get hurt enough somehow to make Ziggler’s cash-in a reality, and (2) didn’t want to do the exact same match as Sunday, but couldn’t come up with anything better, so they said “Dutch, go stand ON the apron instead of beside it.”

Seriously, what does Zeb do here? He just kinda crouch-stands on the apron looking confused. That’s it. He doesn’t save Swagger when Swagger’s in danger, he doesn’t pull the referee out of the ring, he doesn’t distract anybody to keep Swagger’s tap-out from ending the match, he doesn’t do ANYTHING. He’s just there so the match will be technically different.

The actual match was pretty good, with the best parts of it being rehashed from the Mania match. I did enjoy Swagger falling victim to the Kurt Angle ankle lock counter (“roll forward”) and selling it by stumbling a bit and stopping himself at the ropes instead of doing the Kurt thing where he goes flying and straddles the middle rope with his neck. Realism, sort of!

The biggest complaint about this match is that it was 12 minutes long and nowhere NEAR as great as the 3 minute match that followed it.

BEST: HERE TO SHOW THE WORLD

SO, THIS IS HAPPENING

I’m not sure, but Alberto Del Rio vs. Dolph Ziggler for the World Heavyweight Championship might be the best three minute match I’ve ever seen. It was glorious. It accomplished everything you needed to accomplish. Alberto Del Rio was injured enough to justify a short match, but still valiant enough of a champion to fight through the injury and look tough. Ziggler got in a lot of cheap offense but won the match clean (as clean as a post-match Money in the Bank cash-in can be, at least). Most importantly, Ziggler WON THE MATCH, instantly giving the briefcase back the heat it’s been missing since Cena cashed in his like a dweeb and Ziggler hoarded the other one for a year.

How great was this, though? Del Rio’s corner kick was BOSS. Ziggler countered the cross armbreaker using logic (gasp!) instead of just rolling around into another signature move like WWE guys do. The Zig Zag was beautiful. It all worked, and I will be a happy man if Del Rio and Ziggler can get a formal feud soon, because they work SO well together. Plus, they have adorable crews.

Best: Holy Shit, This Crowd

We’re never going to forget Ziggler’s cash-in, thanks almost exclusively to the New Jersey crowd. They jumped the shark a little later when they did the “We Are Awesome” chant and started chanting for Michael Cole, but they did something very important: they stopped taking their cues, and just cheered for whatever made them happy and shat on whatever didn’t. WWE treated this like a crazy, once-in-a-lifetime happenstance, but you know what? This is what wrestling crowds are supposed to be like. See how great it is when the reactions are fun and organic, and not a bunch of line-reads you taught them before the show? It makes wrestling seem like a cool, fun thing to watch with your friends, and not like the propaganda and t-shirt sales video it usually is.

Best: Dolph Ziggler’s Crew > Your Crew

I love them. Absolutely love them. Kaitlyn had an awful, catty tweet about how AJ “didn’t know whether to laugh or cry” and how she was crazy, but f**k Kaitlyn, because crying and laughing can both be side effects of SHOOT JOY, and AJ had it. So did Big E. These three should be friends forever.

(they should also let Big E use his own entrance theme, because that is kinda weird)

Best: SIERRA HOTEL INDIA OTHER WORDS

Remember that theory that The Shield exists as an extension of my pro wrestling watching anger, and when I get to my breaking point they show up and beat people up on my behalf? Yeah, Undertaker cutting promos is my least favorite thing in the world, especially when they stop being about THE DEPTHS OF HAIL and veer towards issues regarding This Business, so theory validated.

I really, really wanted to see The Shield take Undertaker out (if only for the sight of Tyler Black standing tall over the goddamn Undertaker), but I’m also okay with Team Hell No making the dramatic save, and with Daniel Bryan being an honorary Brother Of Destruction. Because seriously, this picture is amazing:

photo credit: WWE.com

This will make a hell of an Extreme Rules match. Or a solid WrestleMania match next year, which would give us a year of The Shield steamrolling super teams en route to breaking Undertaker’s streak as a unit. Or, more importantly, riding into the arena on a f**king helicopter. No, I don’t care if Mania is in the Superdome. They can land on the roof and cut holes in the ceiling.

Page 4

Worst: And The Rest!

the hell is this match

If you’re like me, you saw 3MB going up against the Italian Arthur Rosenberg, the black Stan Stansky and their less-important-than-Rosenberg-and-Stansky friend and thought, “okay, who is debuting to beat them all up?” It’s the show after Mania, major things are happening and six goofy chumps are going at it in the ring. Mason Ryan, maybe? Is Mason Ryan still a thing?

But then it was just … uh, a match. My only working theory is that WWE was worried that the crowd was getting out of hand, knew a Randy Orton/Sheamus match was coming up next and needed something to bore everybody and cool them down. So they thought, “hey, these guys never get a reaction, let’s send them out and make them WRESTLE, HAW HAW.”

Spoiler alert: That did not work.

Best: You Know That Was Totally When Triple H Was Supposed To Give A Post-Match Speech, But He Chickened Out Because Of The Crowd

I was in the SummerSlam crowd that chanted “you tapped out” and “na na na na hey hey hey goodbye” at Triple H. I watched him take a week off to distance himself from that, then show up on Raw to deliver the same “I’m sorry, I love me” act to get the reaction he thought he deserved at SummerSlam. And sure, he probably took the week off for “arm injuries” (read: to get the deadly jizz burns off of his stomach) and there’s no conspiracy to be had, but man, I would’ve loved Triple H standing in the ring trying to wank and dick joke this crowd.

Remember that Survivor Series when CM Punk was getting bigger cheers than DX or the Hardyz, so H took the microphone and was all, “oh hey, Triple H thinks you should cheer for CM PUNK” to bogart the reaction? Yeah, he’s not above it. WWE, please hold all shows in front of crowds like this so Triple H will not appear. Please and thank you.

Worst: What’s My Line

The best part of the show was easily Randy Orton interrupting Sheamus in the ring, forgetting his lines, then pausing, walking up to Sheamus and repeatedly saying “what’s my line” until he came up with something shitty and they jumped to commercial break. When they came back, they had Brickie cut to the chase and be all “oh so you BOTH want a match against Big Show,” because apparently Randy Orton has never taken level one improv anywhere and couldn’t just make up some shit about how he wanted a match, since, you know, he shouldn’t be expected to follow his own stories or pay attention to anything he’s done or said. Big Show knocked you out at WrestleMania and you JUST recorded a thing where you asked Booker T for a match against Show. JUST MAKE SOMETHING UP. “I want a match with Show and I deserve it more than you” is not Oscar Wilde, you Burgertime f**king hot dog.

Best: Orton And Sheamus As Goldberg And Brock Lesnar

The WWE Fan Nation video skips all of that, fills up most of the clip with Brickie and the backstage segments, and jumps right to the end of the match. What it misses is the greatest ever example of a crowd saying “f**k it” to playing along and shitting all over a boring, pandering, unimportant match between guys they hate. FINALLY.

None of this made sense. Orton and Sheamus both wanted a match with Show. Sheamus asked the lady in charge of Raw. Orton asked the guy from Smackdown for whatever reason. In theory, that alone should’ve been an excuse to say “it’s Raw, Sheamus gets the match.” Instead they do a poll, asking the WWE Universe who they think should wrestle Show, and they overwhelmingly pick Orton, because the only people voting on the app are people who’d want to see Randy Orton. So that’s reason to say “Orton gets the match.” Instead of either of those things, they have a flubby mic exchange and end up being put in a match against each other for the … I don’t know, prestige of facing Big Show later? They aren’t having a title match. Why couldn’t they do a triple threat, or take turns?

So the crowd recognized that the match was stupid garbage and treated it appropriately. They chanted “END THIS MATCH,” “RVD,” “JBL” and anything else they could think of to pass the time. Sheamus and Orton just obliviously ignored them, doing their same bullshit match as they were told, not once considering that they should have a little fun and actually play to the crowd they’re paid to play to. They went through the entire 15 minutes of motions en route to the finish the crowd would’ve loved three minutes in. It was a weird “us vs. them” thing, and if WWE learns anything from Monday night, it should be that fans are better when they’re allowed to live and breathe. How much more fun does this show seem than a normal Raw? This is what you want casual fans to tune into … crowds that cannot stop having fun, even when your show sucks. That’s basically Nitro in a nutshell, isn’t it?

The Ziggler cash in was amazing… When his music hit I just started yelling at my wife and son to get in the room. My wife actually sat down to watch it like it was important. My son just kept playing angry birds. He’ll learn soon

Yeah I shouted my girlfriend and son into the room as well to watch it.
My girlfriend enjoyed it, but then shouted at me for playing it again straight after
My son asked why i was cheering for a bad guy, so I just said that Ziggler was the real good guy.

Oh, haha, you fixed the page snafu while I was clicking through and I got to the last page and went “wait did he seriously not write anything about Dolph Ziggler?” before realizing it’s on the NEW page 3 that I already missed.

The most anticipated B/W of Raw totally delivered. I love that the emotions of the Ziggler crew are something that had extra things to make it memorable, because there was never a doubt in my mind that those were 100% real emotions. It’s awesome when real-life wrestling fan AJ gets to show through her character.

Also, I thought that, oddly enough, the best person at handling the rowdy, having-no-bullshit-but-their-own crowd was Cena, who never once seemed overwhelmed by it and delighted in both playing with them and playing TO them. Nobody seems to pick up verbal cues from the atmosphere and try audibles to work with them more than Cena, both in taunting them with “the heel turn” up to tangoing in the main-event. I hated the “bad breath” comment but I thought pretty much everything else Cena did last night was great, which is a weird damn thing for me to say.

I feel like, if he chilled on the puerile insults (or just had this aggressive a crowd every week), he’s basically already a brilliant heel, entirely apathetic to the whims of a crowd that hates him. You challenge him, he can rise.

The ass breath comment is for his core demographic. There’s nothing he can do about saying those stupid comments.

With that said, it would have been nice after Cena’s ballroom dance move if the crowd started to cheer for Cena. The dude earned it for how he handled the crowd. He didn’t run like a certain coolest, baddest, toughest COO that we know.

Let’s not get carried away with comments about how Cena is ~forced~ to do such and such because core demographics and would secretly love to be more clever. Something tells me he’s the type who finds poop jokes HILARIOUS.

That’s the thing about Cena though. You would think he’s built enough cache with Vince to be able to say, “I want to try being a heel for a while and letting these other guys carry the torch.” It doesn’t have to effect his charity work, and it could end up getting him up around the most titles of all time without being forced down our throats.

Because I feel like I am writing from my deathbed (thanks, New Jersey!), I forgot to mention the little kid behind us who was legitimately cooler than anyone else there. Choice quotes include “Jack Swagger ain’t got no swag. If he did, he wouldn’t be wearing that” and “The only good thing about Matt Hardy was his pants.” That kid ruled, and I hope he loves wrestling forever.

They were probably more worried about getting in trouble for improvising than worried about pleasing the crowd. Cena can get away with that shit because he’s John Cena and what are they gonna do about it, but Orton and Sheamus presumably have less leeway.

I think he feels like he can only do so much as a face. I mean the punt has been taken away from him, and he hasn’t been in a memorable feud since Christian and Mark Henry. I still kinda root for him because of the crazy shit he did to people in the past which I still believe can be done with proper writing/booking.

Orton is a genuine @sshole. He needs to be a heel. Him as a face just wastes what natural gifts he has.

Plus, Sheamus trying to play to the crowd by pounding his chest and doing his “Brouge” chant before he went for the kick killed me. He really has no awareness of his surroundings. Seriously, I think he has “Jack” syndrome.

Oops, I just posted something similar. Now I’m not saying Triple H wrote Smackdown to punish the fans that attended Monday Night Raw, but, that show was about as close to a 180 as you could possibly get to Raw.

I totally agree with the fact that Orton and Sheamus surely could have done something to play off the crowd. Can you imagine if one of them had done RVD’s thumbs-to-himself taunt when they were chanting for him? It seemed like they were deathly afraid to engage the crowd.

How they should have played off of the crowd.
Randy stops fighting and joins the crowd wave.
Sheamus woulda been like, “Hey, that looks fun, lemme join ya, fella!”, and as Sheamus lifts his arms up for the wave, BOOM!, RKO! FROM OUTA NOWHERE!

1. Great B&W, Brandon, as always. Of course, I bet this one is more fun to write than most.

2. If you really want to enjoy this at its maximum, when you get to “Best: Orton And Sheamus As Goldberg And Brock Lesnar” turn on ChaChaLaLa and let it play for the rest time you’re reading. It totally makes it even better.

3. I need a link to the Kickstarter project to make Brandon fly on a plane every Monday night. Sorry, Brandon, but you have to do it for the WBs.

I don’t like Randy Orton: I think his matches are mediocre-at-best, his character is dull, and his promos are terrible. I think that Randy Orton is terrible at every aspect of being a pro wrestler outside of being tall and tan. But the one area that Randy Orton is the worst at is improv. Bocce balls is Orton bad at doing something on the fly. If Orton were a newcomer, it happens. But over the years Randy Orton has shown that he reacts to the slightest deviation as though he’s a newborn who just had a bad dream.

Did you not see that heel run he had where he introduced all the “viper” stuff, like that coil spring/pound on the mat bit? I think it was around 2008/2009. He was so unbelievably awesome during that run that I have trouble believing anyone who saw it would think he’s a terrible pro-wrestler.

The problem with Orton (and has been the problem since he got so incredibly over as a psychotic heel and crowds were cheering him so hard that they turned him face) is that he’s bored out of his mind. He sticks around because what else is he going to do with his life, but he hasn’t given a fuck in years. It’s such a colossal waste of talent.

I’ve said it before but one of the best things that could realistically happen for WWE is Randy Orton caring about his job again.

Lester speaks the truth. I don’t know what Orton’s got going on personally, but if he could get back to where he was a few years ago, he could be a serious superstar again. There’s a reason he was in Evolution, after all. He’s just got a lot of issues.

Let’s give a small pass to the Smackdown crowd, because those are always terrible and yet reports say there was some effort made. Plus, some of the worst parts of the spoilers aren’t likely to be on tv.

Aren’t they going to the UK in a few weeks? I have faith that the Brits won’t let us down, even if South Carolina does next week.

Yep, in a fortnight. We will do our best, but can’t promise they won’t overdub us. I can probably guarantee a few “WHO ARE YA?” chants though. (My favourite remains chanting “That’s illegal!” to R-Truth, after water’s heel turn, as he smoked a cigarette inside the arena.)

Miss Ellie doesn’t watch a ton of WWE because she goes to bed before Raw and/or SmackDown, BUT, we do watch a lot of Saturday Morning Slam. The way Ellie shows her appreciation of people is to wave at them. Person who gets some of her BIGGEST waves: Brad Maddox, so, you’re not the only one who likes him.

Randy’s anger toward the crowd filled me with terrible joy. He is just.. so unprofessional when things don’t go as scripted, and he is so bad at all the things. Cena may be the ultimate corporate stooge, but he at least knows how to play to the audience.

Nice Recap Brandon and Nice Guest Recaps Danielle and Jeremy. I find it funny that the WWE is happy to show the chants in the Sheamus-Orton match, but they don’t realize that the crowd only did that because they did care about the match. If Ziggler didn’t cash in and that crowd didn’t get on a perpetual high, things would have gotten ugly.

I wish Raw were this fun every week. If that was the case I would have no problem sharing my love of pro wrestling with all my friends; how could you hate thousands of people singing a silly song for a sillier dancing man? The larger question I guess is whether the crowd was so good that they made the show feel amazing, or that we actually got a really good show. I’m not sure what the answer is.

Thought of some down the road booking. Eventually, they need to have a Del Rio/Fandango feud where the storyline is Ricardo is the only announcer that says Fandango’s name correctly so Fandango wants to steal him away from Del Rio.

Gotta say that my favorite part of the show (besides Ziggler) was definitely a beaten and battered Fandango using his last ounce of strength to correct Justin Roberts on pronouncing his name coupled with the crowd’s genuine applause upon completion. It was just such a solid, professional payoff to the joke.

That was my favourite part too! I was going to post a comment about it if no one else did.

The way his voice wavers on the first syllable, turning it into a moan of pain, is just a beautiful thing. So was nameless ladyfriend’s look of grave concern and Curtis’s furrowed brow of pained concentration.

Oh, and another awesome thing about the 3-minute Ziggler/ADR match (which I agree was fantastic): Ziggler coming out to his music and walking with purpose toward the ring. I’m so used to guys running out unannounced, dragging refs behind them, and depending on who you talk to, it’s a cowardly or opportunistic move. But Dolph was played out to his music, and he walked to the ring, and it’s the kind of thing you’d see a guy do if he wanted his opponent to become seized with dread over his impending loss. ADR going down like a fighter was amazing, and so was Dolph coming out like one.

It was smart in that his deliberate entrance fed the crowd, by the time the ref had actually rung the bell the place was going nuts. When ADR kicked out it they went crazy. It was one of the best MIB cash ins I’ve ever seen. a perfect 3 minutes.

They actually did have Zeb tag into that “handicap” match for a minute or so, but it was during commercial break and they only showed the footage on the app. By the time they came back live he was back on the apron. Yeah, the app is stupid but I do like that I can watch the match footage when they break in the middle.

Hey Brandon I have been reading B&W for a little over a year now and just wanted to mention how much fun I always have reading it and thank you!

I’ve never commented yet but I had to today. I work with one of the girls on the shuttle bus who called you a smark before Wrestlemania. I showed her your B&W of Wrestlemania and she confirmed it was her and her friend. So I just thought you’d like to know that she is aware and is currently reading your blog :)
I’m sure she’ll soon learn you know all!